There are a lot of smartphones out there now. You know this. To add to the confusion, many companies are now parading out multiple top-drawer phones: think Samsung's Galaxy S and Note series, or the Xperia Z and Z Ultra from Sony. Even LG, whose new G2 flagship I'm poring over this time around, has both the G and G Pro to tempt buyers. It's getting increasingly difficult to launch a smartphone with some standout feature, something more than just bigger screens and faster processors.

For the G2, LG's decided to make a major change to the phone's physical layout -- in a bullet-point summary, it has buttons on the back. Three, in fact. LG reckons that as the size of smartphones has increased, at this point, the viability of buttons around the edges is now questionable. The new G model lands between last year's Optimus G and the Pro size-wise, breaking through the 5-inch screen barrier with a bright 5.2-inch, 1080p IPS screen. The rest of the feature set will seem familiar to anyone who's read a flagship Android phone review in the last 12 months. Optical image stabilization, remote control blaster, a mixed bag of proprietary software features and Android 4.2.2. There's also some new stuff, including 24-bit / 192kHz audio recording and playback, and it could well be the first Snapdragon 800-powered smartphone to reach US stores -- that's Qualcomm's most potent mobile processor yet. But with IFA just finished and the Galaxy Note 3 now official, is a button transplant going to be enough? In fact, that's a red herring, because there's actually a far better reason to buy the G2 -- and it's none of the above. %Gallery-slideshow79381%

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, LG

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